BCS shake-up reaches DEFCON 2 proportions

Posted by Ben Kercheval on November 20, 2011, 2:02 AM EDT

Amazing how a season of build-up, theories and educated guessing can be nullified in a matter of moments. A missed field goal here, a last-second touchdown there, and just like that, everything we had formulated has changed.

No one felt those highs and lows more than Oklahoma, who coincidentally enough had literally experienced earthquakes over the past few weeks. If there was one team who shared the pain of Oklahoma State’s loss Friday night, it was the Sooners. The BCS computers love them some Cowboys, but Bedlam just wasn’t going to carry the same BCS weight now that OK State had a notch in the loss column; beating an undefeated OSU on a Saturday in December would have been far more meaningful for OU.

Think about it: a great showing against an undefeated rival in prime time one day after the Pac-12 championship game could have been enough to sway voters it was OU who deserved to play in the national championship, rather than a rematch.

But that was Saturday morning at just past midnight.

Not a few hours ago, OU got a second chance when Oregon failed to pull off a dramatic comeback against USC, missing what would have been a game-tying field goal with just seconds remaining. The Trojans would leave Autzen Stadium with a 38-35 win. A week ago, the Ducks beat then-No. 4 Stanford at The Farm to re-emerge as a national championship contender, occupying the same spot the Cardinal fell from on last Sunday night when the latest BCS standings were revealed. Come tomorrow, Oregon will be back out of the title picture.

That left the Sooners with a golden opportunity against Baylor. Although down for much of the second half, Oklahoma quickly scored 14 points in the fourth quarter to tie their game at 38 with just under a minute to play. Bob Stoops‘ bunch are frustrating to watch at times given their skill level, but Oregon’s BCS stumble was a gift for the Sooners to take. Win, and the human voters would almost certainly give OU the edge over ‘Bama provided they won Bedlam.

No rematch. Thank ya, Lord!

Then Robert Griffin III happened.

The redshirt junior quarterback needed just 43 seconds to drive 80 yards and throw a 34-yard touchdown pass to Terrance Williams in the right corner of the endzone while on the move.

We’re not giving him the trophy yet. We’re just saying his stock shot back up.

And in the spirit of buying and selling, can anyone get rid of their Clemson shares fast enough? The Tigers got all nostalgic on us Saturday, bringing back shades of old Clemson in a 37-13 loss to NC State that made Dabo Swinney turn a shade of purple that closely resembled the school’s colors. With Oregon, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State all going down, who’s to say Clemson couldn’t have made a late-season surge for a national title spot? A little lobbying with that southern Dabo charm and Clemson could have finally taken their program — and the ACC — to the next level.

Feeling equally bad, if not worse, has to be Boise State. Just make a dang field goal, Broncos, and — ah ha! — the BCS planets would have aligned for you. Those years of winning early-season games and BCS bowls could have finally paid off. A rematch? Pish-posh! Even BCS guru Brad Edwards would have had to concede.

“Eh, let’s see what these kids got.”

After all, could anyone in the right mind really allow a rematch between LSU and either Bama or Oregon when 1) those results were already decided on the field and 2) Boise was untapped and unproven?

Every game matters? BCS, you little minx.

But the reality is that Boise has a loss and their BCS championship hopes are gone, which brings us to this: how far up should undefeated Houston climb? With so many one-loss teams desperately doing everything they can to avoid playing No. 1 LSU, perhaps it’s time we give the non-AQ a shot. Two teams have already shown they couldn’t defeat the Tigers, and a handful of others showed they either can’t get out of their own way, or can’t win their division.

What about No. 9 Virginia Tech? If the Hokies win the ACC with just one loss, should they not be in the discussion? What if LSU folds against No. 6 Arkansas in one week, or No. 13 Georgia in two? Does Arkansas get in the picture? Can two SEC teams who didn’t play in their conference championship play for a BCS title?

(For what it’s worth, Edwards projects the top five BCS teams by tomorrow night will be LSU, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma State and Stanford)

By the way, these are real questions to BCS executive director Bill Hancock. I’ll hang up and listen.

Something tells me I’m not going to get a definitive answer. Probably because there isn’t one and the one we’ll get is equally frustrating: “We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out.”

The problem is that I know how I want it to play out, and it’s not this way.

On numerous occasions in the past we’ve documented NASCAR’s connection to college football — especially when it comes to the Deep South and the SEC — but I don’t believe we’ve ever connected the open-wheel version of racing to it. Until now.

Earlier this week, 26-year-old IndyCar Series driver — and Columbus, Ohio, native — Graham Rahal revealed that he would be wearing a rather slick Ohio State football-themed racing helmet for this Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, which is less than an hour drive from both Rahal’s hometown and the Buckeyes’ home turf.

Perhaps borrowing a little of the magic elixir that OSU used in its run to the 2015 College Football Playoff, Rahal drove his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing machine — and his scarlet & gray helmet — to victory lane Sunday afternoon, picking up his second win of the season and the third of his career.

Traditionalists, hide the women and children. And then your eyes and ears, as you may not like what you’re about to see and hear.

Andrew Lind is a reporter for the Tidewater News and, apparently, some sort of a uniform connoisseur. In that latter capacity, Lind has tweeted some very jarring news: a handful of the most prestigious college football programs in the country will be sporting black alternate uniforms at some point during the 2015 season.

A total of nine teams, Lind reports, will be going to the dark side this coming year: Alabama, Florida, Florida State, LSU, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas.

The above are Nike t-shirts that have been available in retail stores for several months. It’s unclear, if the report is accurate, how closely the t-shirts would resemble the actual black uniforms that will reportedly be worn by those nine teams.

As Lind notes in a followup tweet, it’s “[s]omewhat surprising to hear Texas will have a black alternate jersey just days after head coach Charlie Strong said the team would not.”

Georgia has worn a black jersey on occasion in the past, as has Oregon and Florida State. According to ElevenWarriors.com, Ohio State will join that group for their October prime-time game against Penn State.

And, if you had been paying attention, Buckeye fans, this alternate move to the dark side shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Remember, here's the photo from Urban Meyer's desk last season. Meyer, when asked, said he'd "be good" with blacks. pic.twitter.com/pdQKEgPkNm

UPDATED 3:19 p.m. ET: By way of Oklahoma senior associate athletics director/external operations Kenny Mossman, one football program has denied they will be going alternate black jersey for a game this season.

Kellen Jones began his collegiate career in the Big Ten… continued it in the Big 12… continued it further in the ACC… and will now, reportedly, finish it in the conference in which he started.

247Sports.com reported late this past week that Jones has decided to transfer out of the Clemson football program and transfer into the one at Wisconsin. Jones made his decision after taking an official visit to Madison earlier in the week.

Because the linebacker has already graduated from Clemson, he will be eligible to play immediately in 2015 as long as he enrolls in a grad program not offered at his now-former school.

Jones did manage to play 12 games for the Sooners before transferring to the Tigers. At Clemson, he played in a total of 16 games, including 13 in 2014. He was credited with 29 tackles, one forced fumble and a half of a tackle for loss.

Junior college wide receiver Jarvis Baxter set his sights on joining the South Florida Bulls this fall, but academic concerns forced him to try and back out of a letter of intent. USF’s loss will be Oklahoma’s gain. Baxter will reportedly walk-on with the Sooners and report to fall camp this coming week.

According to a report from Scout.com, Baxter will meet the academic requirements to enroll at Oklahoma and intends to join the program on Tuesday when players report to camp in Norman. The academic hang-up with USF stemmed from having too many summer credits to count toward his GPA in Tampa. Those extra credits do count at Oklahoma.

“I talked with [Oklahoma offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley], and he said they have a walk-on spot at wide receiver open,” Baxter said to Scout.com. “I talked to my family about it and decided this would be the best thing for me to do.”

Baxter said he expects to have a chance to receive a scholarship this season. He will arrive at Oklahoma with three years to play two seasons for the Sooners.

Former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor is currently hard at work learning a new position in an attempt to land a roster spot with the Cleveland Browns. It is somewhat similar to the experience of Braxton Miller right now at Ohio State, although Miller is guaranteed a roster spot in the fall. The same is not true for Pryor in the NFL. On Saturday, Pryor’s former Ohio State coach, Jim Tressel, paid a visit to Browns training camp.

As it just so happens, the Browns will be holding a training camp practice inside Ohio Stadium this month, which means Pryor will take the field in Columbus for the first time since unceremoniously being suspended by the program and deciding to enter the NFL supplemental draft following the infamous tattoo-gate scandal of 2011. That scandal ultimately cost Tressel a job as head coach as well and led to a postseason ban for Ohio State, served by Urban Meyer in his first year on the job rather than in the 2011 season. Asked about Pryor’s upcoming Ohio Stadium homecoming, Tressel said it was going to be a cool moment for him, although he also served up a not-so-flattering prediction (in good humor).

In related Browns-Buckeyes news, current Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones stopped by practice on Saturday, sporting his 12-gauge t-shirt. Jones was there to support his friend and former high school teammate Shane Wynn (a former Indiana Hoosier).

The largest video scoreboard in the nation could be even more impressive from behind. While nothing is officially planned just yet, the construction of the new video scoreboard at Auburn has some envisioning even more video goodness to be enjoyed in the years to come. This time the video entertainment could be for the benefit of fans outside Jordan-Hare Stadium.

“In the future what we may end up doing is we may end up putting LED video boards back there so it’s not static signage,” Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs said in a story published by Al.com. “So that we can do things like ‘Graduation today at a certain time’ or ‘congratulations to professor Smith for winning the Leischuck award,’ things like that because it’s such a big board and massive space. I didn’t want it just to be solid, I want it to be something that we can actually utilize.”

Yeah, sure you could do all sorts of cool things with that extra video space. You could also sell advertising. You will definitely sell extra advertising. In this day and age you have to utilize every square inch you possibly can to squeeze as much revenue out of a football program you can. While the murals of former players like Bo Jackson, Cam Newton and Pat Sullivan would be cool, they don’t provide nearly the amount of cash Dr. Pepper or Chick-fil-A would.

Temperatures may have reached a boiling point between Ole Miss offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil and his stepfather, but it seems the two have agreed to keep their family business in house instead of pursue legal action against one another. Domestic violence charges against each other are expected to be formally dropped on Monday, according to a report from Riley Blevins of The Clarion-Ledger.

Whatever happened is now behind both men, and hopefully things have been smoothed over. Ole Miss suspended Tunsil from the team while the legal process played out, but head coach Hugh Freeze has seemed understanding of the situation from the jump and should be expected to find it appropriate to welcome Tunsil back to the program as quickly as possible.

That is, of course, as long as the NCAA investigation does not yield any rules violations. For that to happen, the NCAA will have to find incriminating evidence through testimony from witnesses. Miller would seem to be the first person the NCAA would wish to speak to, but now that he and Tunsil have agreed to drop charges who knows how cooperative he would want to be with the NCAA.

It was all blown out of proportion, Michigan linebacker Joe Bolden says of his pregame driving of a tent spike into the field at Michigan State last fall. The pregame act did not go unnoticed by Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio, who took issue with it after the Spartans’ blowout victory over the Wolverines, for which former Michigan head coach Brady Hokeapologized.

Michigan State quarterback Connor Cook said Michigan State felt disrespected and he played with a bit of an extra chip on his shoulder as a result. Bolden understands that, but seemed to shrug it aside this week.

“Things were said, and somebody said they ran the ball when they wanted to take a knee, well, I’m a competitor, it’s a rivalry football game, I”m running the ball, too,” Bolden said. “If I’m a head coach I”m running the football. I have the utmost respect for coach Dantonio and his staff.”

There will be one more body on the field when you watch a Mountain West Conference game this season, and neither team will be flagged for too many men on the field. This week the Mountain West Conference confirmed the officiating crew will now consist of eight officials instead of seven. The conference experimented with the 8-man crew at times last season, and apparently it was deemed a successful trial run.

“Love it. Absolutely love it,” Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun said, per The Denver Post. “I think there are certain expenditures you carry out that are prudent, that make sense, that make for a more quality game. That’s one of them. That’s a good investment.”

Coaches are not the only one applauded having more eyes on the field to monitor the game. The officials are on board as well.

“The last two years I was on a crew of eight officials and what it allowed me to do as a referee is as soon as the play ended go right to the offense and look for substitutions,” Greg Burks, an active official and Mountain West Conference coordinator of officials said this week (via The Herald Journal) said. “And what we found out — without naming the schools — is some of them every time they would go to the sidelines, they were substituting and gaining an advantage because the (opposing) defense wasn’t able to match up.”

It will be the job of the center judge to spot the football. The umpire will retrieve the football from the sideline. Meanwhile, the referee will be able to look at the offensive sideline to monitor substitutions. It should make for a smoother process for officials, with less scrambling around and juggling multiple procedures at once. Refs still need to work on getting everything to run smoothly though, but at least the Mountain West Conference will have a potentially seamless process.

New leadership and conference scheduling requirements and commitments may leave the door wide open for a long-term future for a Keystone State rivalry. Penn State and Pittsburgh have not played since 2000, but a four-game series will begin next season. Penn State Athletics Director Sandy Barbour said this week at Big Ten media days she is scheduled to discuss the future of the series with her counterpart at Pittsburgh, Scott Barnes, in the coming months.

The Big Ten will be moving to a new conference-wide scheduling philosophy that will see all 14 members committed to scheduling one game per season against a power conference opponent. While not technically a requirement, it is one aspect of the new scheduling direction the Big Ten is taking a firm stance. The ACC requires all conference members to schedule one game against a power conference opponent each season as well. This would seem to make Penn State and Pittsburgh ideal and logical scheduling partners for years to come. But college football scheduling is not always so easy.

Pittsburgh will host Penn State in the 2016 season to open up a four-game series between the in-state power programs. The original deal in place was for a brief home-and-home series with each side getting a home game. That was later expanded to a four-game deal, and it is likely to remain that way for the time being. With future schedules arranged years in advance, it may not be likely to see Penn State and Pittsburgh put together any long-term or even brief series for a number of years down the road, as it is not likely either school will be overenthusiastic to schedule multiple power conference opponents in any given year if possible, at least on a regular basis.

UCLA head coach Jim Mora faced plenty of questions about his quarterback situation at UCLA during Pac-12 media days, but he is far from prepared to settle on a starting quarterback for the start of the 2015 season. He must have been prepared for that given Brett Hundley left the Bruins a year early to enter the NFL Draft and Asiantii Woulard is hoping to be ruled eligible to play elsewhere this fall. The spring game yielded far too little confidence in any candidate to grab the starting nod months ahead of the season, so Mora is going to hold off on making any concrete decisions until he can get a better sense of who is ready to lead UCLA’s offense. One thing Mora does not plan to do is use multiple quarterbacks.

“I’d rather use one. I think that is the most beneficial way to build your team and consistency is to use one,” Mora said Friday during Pac-12 media day. “But we’ll see. My gut instinct is to name a guy and support the hell out of him. That’s what I’ve tried to do.”

So, who will that be? The three quarterback race is down to Jerry Neuheisel, Mike Fafaul and freshman Josh Rosen. Despite the high expectations for Rosen, Mora is not getting caught up in the hype just yet.

“He hasn’t taken a snap at this level. So I don’t want to put too many expectations,” Mora suggested. “I’ll let others put expectations on them. I think if Josh reaches his potential every day at the end of his time at UCLA we’ll look back and say he was a success.”

LSU has reinstated three players just days before fall practices are scheduled to open in Baton Rouge. Quarterback Anthony Jennings, defensive lineman Maquedius Bain and defensive back Dwayne Thomas will all be available to practice after being indefinitely suspended from the program.

LSU head coach Les Miles made the decision Friday afternoon with the indication the three players will undergo further in-house discipline. All three were suspended in response to an incident involving alleged unauthorized entry of an inhabited building. The alleged victim in that incident has since asked for the charges against the LSU football players to be dropped. That is exactly what has happened, allowing the door for Miles to welcome back all three, which he suspected might be the case.

This is certainly a reminder just who makes the big decisions in the Big Ten, and it sure is not the head coaches.

A nine-game conference schedule does help improve the conference’s overall schedule, but it also has its drawbacks as well. For starters, it allows for one fewer non-conference game on the schedule, which means less flexibility for scheduling options. On another hand, it also leads the Big Ten beating up on itself just a little more, potentially keeping a Big Ten member from reaching bowl eligibility.

The Big 12 and Pac-12 also use a nine-game conference schedule. The ACC and SEC remain firm on an eight-game conference schedule. The ACC, SEC and now the Big Ten all have a scheduling requirement to include a power conference opponent each season in addition to the conference schedule. The Big 12 and Pac-12 do not have such a scheduling requirement. The Big Ten will also eliminate FCS opponents from the non-conference schedule across the conference.

Earlier in the day in Chicago new Nebraska head coach Mike Riley was asked about the difference between the Pac-12 and the Big Ten, to which the nicest coach in the world shrugged off the notion of the two conferences being too different. His replacement at Oregon State, former Wisconsin head coach Gary Andersen, has a different take on the subject.

“Well, the speed,” Andersen replied when asked the same question at the Pac-12 media day event Friday. “If you want to talk about something that is different. This is without question, and I’m looking from afar through a TV screen or a big jumbo screen we have in the offices that we watch film from and on the TV.

“[T]his league has what we like to call juice,” Andersen explained. “It is fast. There are a lot of guys that make one mistake and you’re going to pay the price quickly. On the defensive side it is the same way. There are elite pass rushers that are fast and quick. There are linebackers that can run on the back end that I believe can make up for a lot of problems that — it’s hard to solve with a pen in your hand, but genetics take over and make you some special plays.”

Prior to taking the Wisconsin head coaching job in 2013, Andersen was the head coach of Utah State. During his tenure at Utah State he coached against one Pac-12 team, in which he emerged victorious over Utah in 2012. In his two seasons with the Badgers in Madison, Anderson lost on the road against Arizona State (in bizarre fashion). So he does have some first-hand experience coaching against the Pac-12 to compare with his brief experience in the Big Ten (which did not end well). Andersen also thinks the Pac-12 lacks credit as a tough conference, physically.

“I never hear people talking about this league is tough-minded. I know it’s not the class, flashy thing to talk about, right, anyway, with the offensive and defensive lines,” Andersen said. “But the fact of the matter is they’re well coached. They’re tough kids. They play with leverage and play with great technique. That is something that jumped out on me on film because I look for that stuff.”

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You have to imagine that being tabbed the preseason media favorite has USC head coach Steve Sarkisian feeling a little extra confident this week. On Friday he may have allowed his confidence to go slightly far in taking a mild-tempered shot at the Oregon Ducks. More specifically, Sarkisian took aim at Oregon’s multiple uniform combinations.

Sark on USC’s recruiting approach: “We fall back on our rich tradition…We’re not going to take the field in 13 different uniforms.”

This is just a guess he is not referring to Appalachian State and their 21 new uniform combinations for the 2015 season. No, this was a direct shot at the Oregon Ducks, who have made suiting up ina different uniform every week something any school looking to generate buzz or gain an edge in recruiting seeks to emulate.

Sarkisian has yet to defeat the Ducks since being named a head coach in 2009 at Washington. In fact, he has not really come close. Since 2009, Sarkisian has lost to Oregon all six times by an average of 25.8 points per defeat. USC seems to have things going in the right direction, and the preseason media poll in the conference certainly gives the Trojans a little extra boost. But until Oregon is dethroned, USC has something to prove on the field.

USC still must get out of a tough Pac-12 South, which saw Arizona State, Utah and UCLA all hand USC a loss in conference play last season. USC will visit Oregon on November 21 this season, in what could potentially be a PAc-12 Championship Game preview. That game will be played two weeks later.